SACP

1. SACP BY: Kelly

2. What is the SACP • South African Communist Party (SACP) is a political party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa. The SACP is a partner of the Tripartite Alliance which consists of the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).

3. The Communist Party of South Africa first came to prominence during the armed Rand Rebellion by white mineworkers in 1922. The large mining concerns, facing labour shortages and wage pressures, had announced their intention of liberalizing the rigid colour bar within the mines and elevate some blacks to minor supervisory positions. (The vast majority of white miners mainly held supervisory positions over the laboring black miners.) Despite having nominaly opposed racialism from its inception, the CPSA supported the white miners in their call to preserve wages and the colour bar with the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!". With the failure of the rising, in part due to black workers failing to strike, the Communist Party was forced by Comintern to adopt the Native Republic thesis which stipulated that South Africa was a country belonging to the Natives, that is, the Blacks. The Party thus reoriented itself at its 1924 Party Congress towards organising black workers and "Africanising" the party. By 1928, 1600 of the party's 1750 members were Black. In 1929, the party adopted a "strategic line" which held that "The most direct line of advance to socialism runs through the mass struggle for majority rule". By 1948 the Party had officially abandoned the Native Republic policy. The CPSA was declared illegal in 1950. The party went underground and, in 1953 relaunched itself as the South African Communist Party - the name change emphasising the party's orientation towards the particular concerns of South Africans. The party was not legalised until 1990. The CPSA/SACP was a particular target of the apartheid regime elected in 1948. The Suppression of Communism Act was used against all those dedicated to ending apartheid, but was obviously particularly targeted at the SACP. Following the repression of the CPSA, the party adopted a policy of primarily working within the ANC in order to reorient that organisation's programme from a nationalist policy akin to the CPSA's former Native Republic policy towards a non-racial programme which declared that all ethnic groups residing in South Africa had equal rights to the country. While black members of the SACP were encouraged to join the ANC and seek leadership positions within that organization, many of its white leading members formed the Congress of Democrats which in turn allied itself with the African National Congress and other 'non-racial' congresses in the Congress Alliance. The Congress Alliance committed itself to a democratic non-racial South Africa where the 'people shall govern' through the Freedom Charter. The Freedom Charter, having been developed by leading members of the Congress of Democrats, was adopted by the ANC leadership and has since remained the corner stone of the ANC's programme throughout the years of repression. History